What are you prepping for?

If you want to get strange looks, suspicious glances, maybe even see people physically recoil, just casually mention to friends or family that you’re a prepper or at least interested in prepping. I get funny looks from both my wife and my mom whenever the subject comes up. I know sometimes prepping gets a bad rap, but of all people you’d think my mom and my wife would know I’m not a “crazy”…

The first time happened when I told my wife I wanted to get five cases of distilled water. She couldn’t imagine why we needed it, after all we have tap water. I asked her what happened if something went wrong with the tap.

“Well, if that happens we’ll just go to the store and get some then. Besides, you don’t have room to store it.”

So I explained that if everyone went to the store at the same time to get water as us, the store might be out of water and we wouldn’t have any.

“Oh come on. That’s not going to happen.”

So I asked her if she didn’t think it was a good idea to have some water on hand just in case, to, you know, be prepared?

“Prepared for what?”

The next time happened when we visited my mom. I’d just gotten a copy of Preppers Blueprint and I took it along to read. My mom noticed the book and asked what it was. I told her it’s a book on prepping.

“What is prepping?”

So I told her a little about it and why I am interested in it.

“Oh, what are you prepping for?“

Well, what am I prepping for? First of all, I’m not a doomsday prepper. I don’t believe there is a coming zombie apocalypse, and if there is large scale nuclear war I think I’d be better off at Ground Zero than living through it and dealing with the aftermath. That’s just me, YMMV.

I’m more into prepping for things that are likely to actually happen to me or my family. Boring things like what if there’s a major snow storm and I have to get home from work, pick up my kid from school, and make sure my wife can get home safely from her job. Or the power going out for a few hours or a few days. Silly things like fixing a stuck toilet valve (do you have any idea how much it costs to get a plumber just to take a look?). I’m prepped for a house fire. Major illness. Financially, I’m taking steps to make sure we could survive either or both of us losing our jobs. Putting a plan in place to communicate with family and friends even if the internet is down and the cell phones aren’t working.

When I think about it, most of what I’m doing to prep wouldn’t have been called “prepping” 30 years ago, it was just what people did back then so it didn’t even have a name. I guess if you’d asked somebody to call it something back then, they might have just called it “common sense.” So maybe I’m not really prepping at all, I’m just practicing “common sense” – which doesn’t seem to be very common these days. Maybe that’s why id needs a special name. It’s not an action, it’s just a mindset that leads me to do certain things. And even though I’m not prepping for TEOTWAWKI, I think my mindset and the things I do because of that mindset will help me and my family survive most big events that could happen. Well, except maybe a zombie apocalypse or large scale nuclear war.